There has conventionally been a demand to customize, in accordance with the installation environment of a printing system, a printer driver program (to be referred to as a printer driver hereinafter) which controls a printer for use. Particularly in recent years, the use mode of the printer is diversified depending on the customer, and the demand to customize the printer driver is increasing.
In order to meet this demand, the vendor of a printer driver provides the user with a customization system even for a conventional printer driver. An example of an item customizable by the customization system is a limitation on changing print settings by the user. In general, the user can change print setting values from the user interface (to be simply referred to as a “UI” hereinafter) of the printer driver. However, the printer driver can be customized to limit a change of a designated item so as to inhibit the user from changing print setting values. In this specification, the limitation on changing print settings will be called input control. Print setting items subjected to input control can be designated when the printer driver is customized.
References which disclose the customization technique are, for example, patent references 1, 2, and 3:
[Patent Reference 1] Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-278871
[Patent Reference 2] Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-297341
[Patent Reference 3] Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-150341 (paragraphs 0011 to 0014)
A printer driver customized by a conventional customization system is assigned a unique code (custom driver code) for identifying the printer driver as a customized one. The custom driver code cannot be referred to from another program module or the like. It cannot be externally determined whether the computer uses the customized driver.
Assume that there is a network system which obliges a connected computer to use a customized printer driver. Even if the customized printer driver is used, it is difficult for the system administrator to know the use of the customized printer driver, i.e., it is difficult to manage the system. In some cases, an installed driver is overwritten by installing a driver of a new version using an installer. Also at this time, the installer cannot grasp that the installed driver is a customized one. For this reason, the new driver cannot inherit information (to be referred to as customization information) unique to customized items.
The following problem also occurs. Patent reference 3 proposes a driver installer which prompts the user to select limitations on functions of a driver in installing the driver, and interactively sets functions under the selected limitations.
Patent reference 2 proposes a method of simplifying customization operation. More specifically, the user registers, as a parameter file in a server, the values of various parameters used for functions of a printer driver. After the end of printer driver install processing by the install processing unit of the installer, a parameter request unit requests parameter values of the server. A parameter receiving unit receives the parameter values from the server, and transfers them to the parameter change unit of the printer driver to change the parameter values.
The installer in patent reference 3 must change information on print settings (to be also referred to action settings) for each computer to values suitable for the configuration or environment. This installer is not suited to installation of many computers or centralized management by the system administrator or the like. According to the method in patent reference 3, the print function of a printer driver installed in the PC of each user cannot be limited at the discretion of the system administrator (IT manager).
According to the method in patent reference 2, no driver can be installed unless a complicated parameter file is prepared in advance. There must be provided an environment in which a server and client can communicate with each other via a network. The system environment is limited.